Gromatici (from Latin groma or gruma, a surveyor's pole) or agrimensores was the name for land surveyors amongst the ancient Romans. [1] The "gromatic writers" were technical writers who codified their techniques of surveying, most of whose preserved writings are found in the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum . [2]
At the foundation of a colony and the assignation of lands the auspices were taken, for which purpose the presence of the augur was necessary. But the business of the augur did not extend beyond the religious part of the ceremony: the division and measurement of the land were made by professional measurers. These were the finitores mentioned by the early writers, [3] [4] who in the later periods were called mensores and agrimensores. The business of a finitor could only be done by a free man, and the honourable nature of his office is indicated by the rule that there was no bargain for his services, but he received his pay in the form of a gift. These finitores appear also to have acted as judices, under the name of arbitri (single arbiter), in those disputes about boundaries which were purely of a technical, not a legal, character. The first professional surveyor mentioned is Lucius Decidius Saxa, who was employed by Mark Antony in the measurement of camps. [5] [1]
Under the empire the observance of the auspices in the fixing of camps and the establishment of military colonies was less regarded, and the practice of the agrimensores was greatly increased. The distribution of land amongst the veterans, the increase in the number of military colonies, the settlement of Italian peasants in the provinces, the general survey of the empire under Augustus, the separation of private and state domains, led to the establishment of a recognized professional corporation of surveyors. [1] The practice was also codified as a system by technical writers such as Julius Frontinus, Hyginus, Siculus Flaccus, and other Gromatic writers, as they are sometimes termed. The teachers of geometry in the large cities of the empire used to give practical instruction on the system of gromatics. This practical geometry was one of the liberalia studia; [6] but the professors of geometry and the teachers of law were not exempted from the obligation of being tutores, and from other such burdens, [7] a fact which shows the subordinate rank which the teachers of elementary science then held.
The agrimensor could mark out the limits of the centuriae , and restore the boundaries where they were confused, but he could not assign without a commission from the emperor. Military persons of various classes are also sometimes mentioned as practising surveying, and settling disputes about boundaries. The lower rank of the professional agrimensor, as contrasted with the finitor of earlier periods, is shown by the fact that in the imperial period there might be a contract with an agrimensor for paying him for his services.
The agrimensor of the later period was merely employed in disputes as to the boundaries of properties. The foundation of colonies and the assignation of lands were now less common, though we read of colonies being established to a late period of the empire, and the boundaries of the lands must have been set out in due form. [8] Those who marked out the ground in camps for the soldiers' tents are also called mensores, but they were military men. [9] The functions of the agrimensor are shown by a passage of Hyginus, [10] in all questions as to determining boundaries by means of the marks (signa), the area of surfaces, and explaining maps and plans, the services of the agrimensor were required: in all questions that concerned property, right of road, enjoyment of water, and other easements (servitutes) they were not required, for these were purely legal questions. Generally, therefore, they were either employed by the parties themselves to settle boundaries, or they received their instructions for that purpose from a judex . In this capacity they were advocati . But they also acted as judices, and could give a final decision in that class of smaller questions which concerned the quinque pedes of the Lex Mamilia (the law setting which boundary spaces were not subject to usucapio ), as appears from Frontinus. [11]
Under the Christian emperors the name mensores was changed into agrimensores to distinguish them from another class of mensores , who are mentioned in the codes of Theodosius I and Justinian I. [12] By a rescript of Constantine I and Constans (344 AD) the teachers and learners of geometry received immunity from civil burdens. According to a constitution of Theodosius II and Valentinian III (440 AD), [13] they received jurisdiction in questions of alluvio ; but some writers disagree that this crucial passage is genuine. [2] According to another constitution of the same emperors, the agrimensor was to receive an aureus from each of any three bordering proprietors whose boundaries he settled, and if he set a limes right between proprietors, he received an aureus for each twelfth part of the property through which fee restored the limes. Further, by another constitution of the same emperors, [14] the young agrimensores were to be called "clarissimi" while they were students, and when they began to practise their profession, "spectabiles". [15] [16]
The earliest of the gromatic writers was Frontinus, whose De agrorum qualitate, dealing with the legal aspect of the art, was the subject of a commentary by Aggenus Urbicus, a Christian schoolmaster. Under Trajan a certain Balbus, who had accompanied the emperor on his Dacian campaign, wrote a still extant manual of geometry for land surveyors (Expositio et ratio omnium formarum or mensurarum, probably after a Greek original by Hero), dedicated to a certain Celsus who had invented an improvement in a gromatic instrument (perhaps the dioptra , resembling the modern theodolite); for the treatises of Hyginus see that name. [1]
Somewhat later than Trajan was Siculus Flaccus (De condicionibus agrorum, extant), while the most curious treatise on the subject, written in barbarous Latin and entitled Casae litterarum (long a school textbook) is the work of a certain Innocentius (4th-5th century). It is doubtful whether Boetius is the author of the treatises attributed to him. The Gromatici veteres also contains extracts from official registers (probably belonging to the 5th century) of colonial and other land surveys, lists and descriptions of boundary stones, and extracts from the Theodosian Codex. [1]
According to Mommsen, the collection had its origin during the 5th century in the office of a vicarius (diocesan governor) of Rome, who had a number of surveyors under him. The surveyors were known by various names: decempedator (with reference to the instrument used); finitor, metator or mensor castrorum in republican times; togati Augustorum as imperial civil officials; professor, auctor as professional instructors. [1]
The best edition of the Gromatici is by Karl Lachmann and others (1848) with supplementary volume, Die Schriften der römischen Feldmesser (1852). The 1913 edition of Carl Olof Thulin contains only a few works. The 2000 edition of Brian Campbell is much broader and also contains an English translation. [1]
Roman roads were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. They provided efficient means for the overland movement of armies, officials, civilians, inland carriage of official communications, and trade goods. Roman roads were of several kinds, ranging from small local roads to broad, long-distance highways built to connect cities, major towns and military bases. These major roads were often stone-paved and metaled, cambered for drainage, and were flanked by footpaths, bridleways and drainage ditches. They were laid along accurately surveyed courses, and some were cut through hills or conducted over rivers and ravines on bridgework. Sections could be supported over marshy ground on rafted or piled foundations.
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as the designated positions of structural components for construction or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.
A palatine or palatinus is a high-level official attached to imperial or royal courts in Europe since Roman times. The term palatinus was first used in Ancient Rome for chamberlains of the Emperor due to their association with the Palatine Hill. The imperial palace guard, after the rise of Constantine I, were also called the Scholae Palatinae for the same reason. In the Early Middle Ages the title became attached to courts beyond the imperial one; one of the highest level of officials in the papal administration were called the judices palatini. Later the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties had counts palatine, as did the Holy Roman Empire. Related titles were used in Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, the German Empire, and the County of Burgundy, while England, Ireland, and parts of British North America referred to rulers of counties palatine as palatines.
Sextus Julius Frontinus was a prominent Roman civil engineer, author, soldier and senator of the late 1st century AD. He was a successful general under Domitian, commanding forces in Roman Britain, and on the Rhine and Danube frontiers. A novus homo, he was consul three times. Frontinus ably discharged several important administrative duties for Nerva and Trajan. However, he is best known to the post-Classical world as an author of technical treatises, especially De aquaeductu, dealing with the aqueducts of Rome.
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a reformist Roman politician and soldier who lived during the 2nd century BC. He is most famous for his tribunate for the years 123 and 122 BC, in which he proposed a wide set of laws, including laws to establish colonies outside of Italy, engage in further land reform, reform the judicial system and system for provincial assignments, and create a subsidised grain supply for Rome.
Classical antiquity, also known as the classical era, classical period, classical age, or simply antiquity, is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known together as the Greco-Roman world, centered on the Mediterranean Basin. It is the period during which ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and West Asia.
De architectura is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first known book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture.
A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country. Often it is represented graphically in a cadastral map.
The Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum is a Roman book on land surveying which collects works by Siculus Flaccus, Frontinus, Agennius Urbicus, Hyginus Gromaticus and other writers, known as the Gromatici or Agrimensores. The work is preserved in various manuscripts, of which the oldest is the 6th or 7th-century Codex Arcerianus.
The Aqua Virgo was one of the eleven Roman aqueducts that supplied the city of ancient Rome. It was completed in 19 BC by Marcus Agrippa, during the reign of the emperor Augustus and was built mainly to supply the contemporaneous Baths of Agrippa in the Campus Martius.
The Romans constructed aqueducts throughout their Republic and later Empire, to bring water from outside sources into cities and towns. Aqueduct water supplied public baths, latrines, fountains, and private households; it also supported mining operations, milling, farms, and gardens.
Hyginus, usually distinguished as Hyginus Gromaticus, was a Latin writer on land-surveying, who flourished in the reign of Trajan. Fragments of a work on boundaries attributed to him are found in Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum, a collection of works on land surveying compiled in Late Antiquity.
Marcus Fulvius Flaccus was a Roman senator and an ally of the Gracchi. He served as consul in 125 BC and as plebeian tribune in 122 BC.
The groma was a surveying instrument used in the Roman Empire. The groma allowed projecting right angles and straight lines and thus enabling the centuriation. It is the only Roman surveying tool with examples that made it through to the present day.
A Roman colonia was originally a settlement of Roman citizens, establishing a Roman outpost in federated or conquered territory, for the purpose of securing it. Eventually, however, the term came to denote the highest status of a Roman city. It is also the origin of the modern term "colony."
Siculus Flaccus was an ancient Roman gromaticus, and writer in Latin on land surveying. His work was included in a collection of gromatic treatises in the 6th century AD.
Aggenus Urbicus was an ancient Roman technical writer appearing in the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum, a collection of works on land surveying from Late Antiquity. It is uncertain when he lived, but he may have been a Christian living in the later part of the 4th century, judging by expressions he uses.
Centuriation, also known as Roman grid, was a method of land measurement used by the Romans. In many cases land divisions based on the survey formed a field system, often referred to in modern times by the same name. According to O. A. W. Dilke, centuriation combined and developed features of land surveying present in Egypt, Etruria, Greek towns and Greek countryside.
Marcus Junius Nipsus was a second-century Roman gromatic writer, who also dealt with various mathematical questions. His surviving writings are preserved in the Corpus Agrimensorum Romanorum, a compilation of Latin works on land surveying made in the 4th or 5th centuries AD.
In a typical Roman city, an umbilicus represented the reference point used by the city planners to map out the city spaces, including the pomerium, a sacred city boundary. The place for an umbilicus was supposedly set by examining the sky.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Smith, William, ed. (1870). "Groma". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities . London: John Murray.